


Like Veilfire

by Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Choking, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Hate Sex, OR IS IT, POV Solas (Dragon Age), Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Rough Oral Sex, Undernegotiated Kink, Unreliable Narrator, Unsafe Sex, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:53:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26076748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard/pseuds/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
Summary: “Is it true?” Evelyn asked.  “What Leliana said about you.”Solas stilled; as best his network could discern, the spymaster had largely abandoned her search, considering him a loose thread, an unsolved mystery--but not a threat.“What did she say?” he asked, stalling.Evelyn’s full lower lip twisted; she judged him for that evasion.“That you left because of me."It should have been a reassuring answer.  That he hated Evelyn--he imagined that much must have been obvious to anyone watching the two of them, by the end.  He could obscure a great deal about himself, but he had been born in a world where there was no hiding his feelings and the spirits they engendered.  No, he imagined everything he felt was carved clearly on his face for anyone with eyes to see.“Yes,” he whispered.
Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Solas/Female Trevelyan
Comments: 54
Kudos: 162





	1. Chapter 1

The Chosen of Andraste, a blessed hero sent to save them all, had appalling taste in liquor. She changed her order each time, not bothering to finish any of the glasses of sudsy ale and diluted whisky the confused young barmaid brought her. 

If she were looking for something fit to drink, she could save her time and money, Solas thought. He nursed his own goblet of mulled wine; the wine was awful, but boiled and laced with honey and cloves, that hardly mattered. All he could taste was the sugar and the heat of it. 

Solas wondered if this were Evelyn’s first experience ordering in a common inn. She might have stopped at one between the Ostwick Circle and the Conclave. But perhaps not. And not since falling out of the Fade at Haven--she would have veered between state banquets and charred squirrels, the same as him. 

Out of all the inns in all of Val Royeaux, the odds that they would each end up in this one, drinking alone, were...low. His first thought was that it was a trap: some failure of his network had allowed the Inquisition to track him here. But he discarded that hypothesis quickly; even if his network were corrupt, and it was not true that Leliana had largely abandoned her efforts to trace his movements before and after the campaign against Corypheus, he had told nobody that he planned to spend the evening in this part of the city. 

Nothing but whimsy had drawn him into this bar: the golden dragon on the sign and the apple tarts cooling in the window. 

Evelyn did not care for sweets, he remembered that about her. Of course, she cultivated the impression that she was above worldly matters, and a fondness for cakes cut against that persona. But if Evelyn had flaws (and oh, he had devoted hours to cataloguing her flaws), they did not lie in a susceptibility to simple pleasures. 

So it was nothing but plain chance that brought him to this common room at the same time as her. Perhaps the odds were not so low; she was due to attend the Exalted Council in a few days, and he had his own reasons for locating himself nearby at the same time. The city was bound to be swarming with Inquisition agents, and he had set that portion of his network in Val Royeaux not focused on the Qunari to tracking the same. 

If he had erred, it was in assuming that Evelyn would not personally venture out into the city. Nobody was specifically tasked with monitoring her movements, because she never went anywhere alone. 

Well. If she had done so tonight, he could handle that himself. He had automatically taken the best seat for observing the room without being observed; the corner where he sat was dark, and he was masked and hooded in Orlesian style. 

The Inquisitor had taken little effort to disguise herself, but coming alone was its own kind of disguise. No one would expect the Herald of Andraste, closer to the Maker than the Divine, to be drinking alone in a middling inn. All she’d done was to put on gloves, such as any gentry lady would wear. 

Her profile had always been of the kind that looked finest when stamped on coins--too strong and too recognizable in person, he would have thought. And that hair, dark red like dying embers, two shades lighter than her eyes. It was striking when streaming over the back of her gilt-edged armor, yet too untamed for current fashion. Distinctive. 

But it seemed he was the only person in the inn looking at her, and Solas forced his eyes back to his goblet so as not to make himself obvious. 

For what possible reason was she here? Evelyn was not above getting her hands dirty when it suited her purposes, but letting her forces handle things at her direction usually suited them better. 

If his own plans had a weakness, it was the human woman three tables away. Not the power she contained--he saw her ball her left hand into a fist, then watched her covertly shake out her fingers--if he did not intervene soon, it would kill her. Nor her personal abilities--Evelyn’s were no more than average, even for a Circle mage of this era. Not even her personal charms--Solas was sure there were some people who liked her well enough for her own sake, even if he personally could barely stand her, but the woman had no natural gifts of diplomacy or oratory. 

No, the power she wielded was only the result of her conscious, exacting cultivation of it, by any means she thought necessary. She enthroned herself at the top of a mountain of favors, debts, and murders, and the peak rose higher each day. 

It was amazing to think that he had pitied her, once. The dying woman in Haven’s dungeon, her body wracked with his own stolen magic. He thought she would perish there, and he would have one more small and ignoble death on his conscience. 

There had been dirt and blood on her face the first time they met in the waking world. And her direct stare, too present by far in this world where he always felt half asleep. But he could have forgiven her for surviving. For looking at him. Even for seizing upon the fiction that she was sent by her Maker to rescue the wounded world. 

What he could not forgive, he thought, was how she had fooled him. 

In the first weeks of their acquaintance, they had spoken often. It fit his own purposes to cleave closely to the Herald’s side, so as to keep an eye on the Anchor and encourage her to remain focused on the Breach, but accompanying her had not been a trial. She had asked him so many questions, keeping her own counsel on what she thought of his answers. He had convinced himself that she wanted to learn from him. That these southern humans might be nudged towards wisdom, though the application of great patience on his part. 

When he watched her ride back into Haven at the fore of a column of captured Templars, he had thought it was a mistake. Her mistake, certainly, but what could she possibly know, the cloistered youngest daughter of a minor human family, locked up in a tower most of her short life? He was still prepared to be forgiving. She was brilliant, after all. Deftly incisive at each problem presented. He admired her for the way she saw to the heart of matters. Wisdom would follow, he thought. 

When she held a sword aloft in the Skyhold courtyard, swearing herself to the Andrastrian faith, he had another inkling of his misapprehension. The Inquisition needed something to believe in, that was true, but why did it have to be Evelyn? Surely she meant to inspire people to some ideal, not merely her own power.

It was not until he saw her coolly blackmail Grand Duke Gaspard into submission, his sister’s blood still wet on her gown, that he realized his mistake: Evelyn was a monster. A monster with a smile on her face and a kind word on her lips for him, but a woman devoted to no cause more noble than personal survival. It felt like a betrayal, no less than the others he had suffered across his long life. 

He had seen exactly what he wanted in her--and as he watched her in the ensuing weeks, laughing with Madame De Fer, flirting with the Tevinter slaveholder, sympathetically coddling her lyrium-addled Templar warlord, he realized that everyone else had, too. 

When she came to him, full of the power of the Well of Sorrows, he no longer cared but to let her know it. Her eyes shone with stolen knowledge as she asked him civilly for advice; he turned on her. 

“Power,” he spat at her. “You grasp for it like a child for a toy. And for what? Who do you care for, other than yourself?” 

A brief expression flitted across her face--surprise, he told himself, even if it might have been better categorized as hurt. But it was quickly smoothed away in exchange for that pleasant mask she wore. 

“ _You_ will judge me for keeping secrets, Solas? _You_ will take me to task for seeking to control the path of my own life, because I trust no one else with it?” she asked, and her gaze was so penetrating that he had to turn and walk away.

He told himself it was in anger and not in shame. She saw him, and she thought him no better than her. He felt impaled. His guts twisted whenever he caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye. Too often she was looking back at him.

They never spoke again. 

Solas let the dregs of his cup flow back and forth across his tongue as he considered her. He could simply leave. But if fate had placed them in the same common room at the same time, he might bow his head to it in deference. When the barmaid returned, he ordered a second glass--and asked her to bring one for Evelyn as well. 

The barmaid startled, her eyes catching on the shape of his face under his mask; obscured, certainly, but elven. Then she shrugged, considering it his funeral if the lady were to take offense to his boldness. 

Evelyn was wrinkling her nose at a stout when the barmaid deposited the goblet of mulled wine before her. Solas saw her tilt her head in surprise and pleasure; Evelyn was handsome rather than beautiful, but had likely never enjoyed a flirtation with a stranger out of simple lack of opportunity, locked in the Ostwick Circle as she had been. 

He told himself that he did not even expect her to recognize him, for all those times he had caught her looking back. But when she twisted to scan the room, her gaze caught on him immediately. Her shoulders stiffened as she took in his hood, the mask. He tilted his goblet at her in polite acknowledgement. It was her choice, now, whether she approached him.

Elvhen philosophers had once debated the existence of free will: was it possible for someone to act contrary to their nature? Evelyn was no coward; he knew she would come. No choice at all, really. She put a few coins on the table to pay for her other drinks, and carried her wine to his table. 

“I could have been an assassin,” he noted by way of greeting when she seated herself across the table from him, blocking his view of the door. She told him what she thought of that proposition by taking another sip from her glass. He watched the tip of her tongue catch a drop of wine from the corner of her mouth. 

“Nobody knows I’m here,” she pointed out. He nodded in agreement. She took another sip of the wine, wincing at the sweetness, then pushed it to the side of the table. 

“Why _are_ you here?” he asked curiously. 

She shrugged, and for a moment he thought she did not intend to answer. But then she ducked her chin just a fraction. 

“I was lonely,” she said, as though that were a simple answer. He felt that familiar sense of pain in his stomach. It was her answer, not his. It was nothing to do with him. But she was waiting for his response as though she had asked the question, not him. 

“The same, I suppose,” he said, answering what she had not asked. 

He saw a faint smile cross her mouth, quickly suppressed. 

Evelyn folded her hands on the simple wooden table, taking in details of his appearance. The fineness of his cloak. The craftsmanship of his mask. It was all out of keeping with the humble apostate’s guise he had worn for a year at her side. 

She considered her next words for a long time, and while Solas thought that he had long since learned patience, he squirmed.

“Is it true?” she asked at length. “What Leliana said about you.” 

Solas stilled; as best his network could discern, the spymaster had largely abandoned her search, considering him a loose thread, an unsolved mystery--but not a threat. As best he knew, Leliana considered the Dread Wolf a myth, the elves a subjugated group, and the Veil an immutable aspect of the world. 

“What did she say?” he asked, stalling. 

Evelyn’s full lower lip twisted; she judged him for that evasion. 

“That you left because of me."

It should have been a reassuring answer. That he hated Evelyn--he imagined that much must have been obvious to anyone watching the two of them, by the end. He could obscure a great deal about himself, but he had been born in a world where there was no hiding his feelings and the spirits they engendered. No, he imagined everything he felt was carved clearly on his face for anyone with eyes to see. 

“Yes,” he whispered, and the word stuck in his dry throat. He groped for the goblet again to wet his mouth. His hand shook on the stem of it. 

Evelyn did not seem surprised. She looked at him calmly, even stoically. He could discern the tension in her only from the way her hands shifted to grip the edge of the table.

Another moment passed before she spoke again.

“I have a room here tonight,” she said. 

He frowned at the nonsequitur. “Your pardon?” he asked. 

She gave him a questioning look. “You would really rather have this out in this common room?”

Solas suppressed a sigh. He had no plans to kill her. She had enmeshed herself too deeply in the fabric of the Southern nations to be eliminated, even if she did threaten him. Ferelden, Orlais, the Templar Order, the Seekers, even the Chantry--all depended on her backing. 

He could not even imagine this world without Evelyn. 

“Very well,” he said, corners of his mouth flexing in displeasure at the thought of being alone with her. She could not make him tell her what he had planned, of course. And she was no personal threat. But there was always the chance she would catch him by surprise and he would have no choice but to defend himself. 

No--he owed the Inquisition this much, at least. He would tell her where she had erred. Every mistake she had made. Each one of her faults, carved into his memory. If she was brave enough to hear them--and he had never doubted her bravery, at least--he could steel himself to tell her. 

He put his own coins on the table and stood, pushing the rough wooden bench back with a flex of his calves. 

She did not hesitate to see if he would follow her when she turned for the back stair. It was her martial confidence, he thought, that drove the way she walked, with her shoulders back and her hips squared. 

His feet dragged as he followed her up the stairs, his steps heavy and reluctant. He fed the anxiety in his gut some anger, the memory of her bloody hands. She could have been so much more than she was. She could have been _good_. 

The room was likely the finest in this inn, but that only got Evelyn a double bed placed between a fireplace and a window, along with a copper hip-bath still full of cooled water, the towel discarded carelessly on the sanded-board floor. He stared at it, his heart pounding for no reason he could readily explain. 

Evelyn waited until he stood in the center of the room, then circled back behind him to latch the door. He spun to track her movements as she pulled off her gloves, setting them on the side table. Her Mark sputtered, and she rubbed it absently. His sin would be her death, whether he meant it or not. 

He ought to take her arm. Snap it off, if he wanted her to live. Did he? 

“I suppose you have questions,” he told her, the words leaden. 

“No,” she said, crossing the two paces between them. He lifted his hands in instinctive defense, but they were caught uselessly between her body and his own as she pressed her chest against him. She kissed him. Hard, on the mouth, her breath steaming on his face and her hands curling at his shoulders. He would have been less surprised had she summoned veilfire to strike at him. 

Her lips were firm and closed, and her thick eyelashes, the color of foxfur, brushed her cheeks. Solas gasped and stumbled away. 

He lifted one hand to his mouth, whether to brush her kiss away or hold it in, he could not say. The banked anger he kept in her memory flared up, given oxygen and fuel. How dare she? How _dare_ she? 

Her dark eyes glittered as she considered his expression. 

“Well, Solas?” she asked, and it was a taunt. A dare. “Was I wrong about _you_?”


	2. Chapter 2

He could remember the first time he touched her. His hand collapsing the small bones of her wrist, lifting it to the Breach. He thought she looked soft. Vulnerable. 

Evelyn gasped like a prey animal when he thrust his tongue into her mouth. Her hands clenched against his chest. She clung to him for balance as his hips pressed her backwards, and they stumbled together until her back hit the door. 

Solas let his momentum carry him forward until her breasts were crushed against his body. His thigh pressed between her own, pushing her to her tiptoes. He swallowed the noises she made without lifting his lips from hers. 

He did not think she was soft any longer, even as she sucked on his tongue, letting it graze the roof of her mouth. Those hands that held onto his arms had been stained with enough blood to color the world red. Her teeth cut into his lower lip. 

She finally jerked her head far enough back to break the contact, knocking the back of her head against the wooden door. He thought the sound of breathing was hers alone until he tried to speak and recognized his own panting. He stared at her, open mouthed, trying to understand how the past several seconds had carried him to this position. 

Evelyn brushed her hair back over her shoulders, peeking at him from under her eyelashes. "I guess this was inevitable,” she said. 

Solas snarled at the thought. He kissed her again to shut her up. He was not there to listen to anything she had to say.  _ She _ was the one who needed to learn. 

Her hands plucked at his clothing, and it felt too intimate. He batted her hands away, his gaze falling to her neckline. 

“Take it off,” he ordered, letting his fingertips brush her bodice. Her dress blurred the line between ‘robe’ and ‘gown,’ but either way, he imagined she was not wearing much under it. He liked the idea of her naked form, caught between his clothed one and the door. 

The look she shot him was obstinate--and why would he think she would start listening to him  _ now _ ? But her hands went to the buttons that held her bodice together, and she slowly began to undo them. His eyes tracked the tiny movements of her hands, saw where they hesitated to pull the fabric apart. Some demon in him wanted him to overcome her feigned shyness, but he steeled himself to patience as she finally worked the dress off and over her shoulders. It hung at her waist, where lacing cinched it, but like he had thought, she wore nothing beneath it. 

Something in his face must have given him away, because she smiled at what she saw there. Her breasts were as soft and pink as tea roses, somehow unscarred by anything she had suffered over the past three years. Even more beautiful than he had imagined. Her nipples were nearly the same color as her red lips, and the revelation felt like the the answer to every question he’d ever had about her. 

As though he had never learned self-control, he lifted his hands to catch at her nipples and pinch them between his fingers. She leaned up to kiss him again, her hips hard and eager against his, and he could find no reason to stop himself. Her stomach brushed up against him again, and he suddenly perceived that he was hard and aching under the constraint of his trousers, and must have been for some time. 

He wanted to be inside her three minutes ago. He wanted to be inside her three years ago.

As he groped her breasts like the rudest human peasant, she pulled again at his clothing, finally finding the catches in his trousers. She did not even have her dress all the way off--the sleeves bunched around her wrists, the remainder at her waist--but she rolled the heel of her palm against the base of his cock, through the thick fabric of his trousers, and his balls tightened against his body. 

She ducked her head to mouth at the swell of his throat, and her descent made him think of pushing her to the floor and having her there. Like two animals, swelling bruises on both their knees and palms. Of her waking up tomorrow to see bits of grit in her hands and remembering him. 

“Evelyn,” he growled, more for the pleasure of her name on his tongue while her tits were in his hands than to impart any particular instruction, but she seemed to take it as one. She reached behind her to pull the knots that held the laces at her back closed, and the position had the effect of pushing her breasts up towards his face. With an unhappy groan, he sunk his face into what she offered, catching one breast and then the other in his mouth. She choked when he ran his sharp lower teeth along the tip of her nipple, and then he heard the fabric she wore hit the ground. 

He did not instantly open his eyes to take in her nakedness, instead using hard fingers to gather up her breasts for his mouth. He did not particularly care if he left a mark. Who else would see it but her? She had turned down every offer she received before and after he left. Her back bent like a bow as he gave a hard pull with his mouth, and he finally opened his eyes to look down her body. Just a brief pair of linen shorts with a drawstring waist, so transparent that he could see the dark curls of her pubic hair through the fabric. He thought he would be able to rip it with his hands. 

Before he could act on the impulse, Evelyn sank to her knees, lifting her gaze in challenge at him as she went. He swallowed a pulse of anger at her decision. She thought she had the upper hand? He balled his hands into fists as she got his trousers undone and pulled his cock out with hands that shivered a little on his hot skin. Her fingers were slow but not inexperienced as they stroked him up and down. 

Evelyn held him lightly in her hands as she shifted on her knees, getting her discarded clothing arranged beneath her. He hated himself for wondering what she was thinking. For being too much of a coward to ask. 

“Solas,” she said reluctantly, her mouth near enough that the warm heat of her breath hit the head of his cock, “do you-”

“Use your mouth,” he interrupted her harshly. Why would she ask him anything now, when she had never listened to him before? Or worse, she had listened, and she had chosen not to heed him. Had known what she ought to do, fully perceived it, and decided to do something else. 

Her eyes flashed with something like rebellion, and he could laugh at the absurdity of it. That their current dispute was limited to how she could best take his cock. 

“If you’re sure,” she muttered, and he stifled the unwelcome pang of understanding. That she thought that  _ he _ might be the one to regret this. But then she stuck her tongue out to run it against the bottom edge of his cock and he had to put a palm against the door to hold his balance. She cast her eyes up as her lower lip just grazed along the tip of him, and he couldn’t stand it. He put the hand not holding himself up over her eyes, closing them with his palm. 

She took a deep breath and rolled her lips another inch down. 

Some other man before him had had this of her. This much was obvious from the way she worked him over with lips and tongue, varying the way she sucked and licked him in turns. Some other man had had this, taught her this, and then she left him. She had never mentioned who--and he would have noticed if there had been someone else since he had known her. Some other man had this and lost her before she ever traveled to the Conclave. It must have been her who did the leaving. Solas would feel like too much of a monster for it to have been the other way around. 

It was too much effort on her part. Evelyn had a hand against his stomach to support herself and the other wrapped around his base. She took nothing for herself, even as he allowed himself to imagine her sliding a hand into those linen shorts. It infuriated him. Solas did not think he could bear her being sweet to him even as her hair got caught around her face and stuck to her wet lips. Here was something he could do at least: he plucked the strands of hair from around her mouth, then pulled them up to the top of her head, gathering the rest of the soft mass of auburn curls in his fist. 

Her breath caught as she felt his grip tighten, and this too was an answer about her. Her thighs pressed together as she shifted in his grasp. 

“Open your mouth wider,” he told her, unimpressed with how indecisive he sounded. Didn’t he want this? Didn’t he want to wreck her throat, make her choke, leave her whispering orders to her thuggish commander and dead-eyed spymaster for the next week? 

She could drink a barrel of honeyed tea for all he cared, he told himself as she took a deep breath through her nose. She slid down an inch. Then another. Then her nose pressed against the loose fabric of his trousers. His cock pulsed in the soft wet of her throat. He should not try to drag this out. Should not fight the way his balls were already tightening against his body. But the slip of her lips, already loose and swollen around his shaft, was the most sweetness he had felt since waking in this abomination of a world, and he was greedy for the sensation. 

He balled his fist tighter in her hair, pulling on her scalp, letting his hips pump him further into her throat. He was a monster for wanting this. For glorying in the way that her eyes started to water and her nose to leak as he fucked her. Even the Dalish did not think of him as this kind of monster, the kind whose fingernails scraped the wood of the wall panel as the woman on her knees before him struggled to keep her mouth over the full length of his cock. The kind who finally surrendered to orgasm when he felt her abused throat convulse around the head of him. 

He thought, briefly, about pulling away and coming across her round breasts. But regardless of how she would feel about that, she had the bath ready in the room--she would just wash it off. Wash him off. She would carry the taste of him across her tongue now. 

A better man would have given her some warning--but wasn’t he the Great Betrayer? He let her sputter on it, her eyes round and surprised. The look she gave him said that he would pay for that, but what could she do, other than wipe saliva and cum off her chin with the inside of her forearm? 

He ought to do up his trousers, leave now. Just let her hate him. He will give her more than enough additional reason over the days and years ahead. No, he ought to take her arm first. Help her put her clothing back on first, perhaps, leave her with some dignity. 

But he did none of those things. 

Solas stared down at her, chest heaving, although he’d done nothing more strenuous than stand there and have his cock sucked. Her lips were swollen and glossy, and her hair was in disarray. His hands had left red marks on her breast already. He wanted to leave more. 

“Get on the bed,” he said hoarsely, then his hands finally went to his shirt. He jerked his chin at the only real piece of furniture in the room. The coverlet was already drawn back; she would have to sleep in it after he left. 

Evelyn complied slowly, her eyes lingering on him as he shed his clothing. He knew he had scars that could not be explained by any injury he had suffered during his time in the Inquisition. That he had muscles in places a hedge mage would not have developed them. Denuded of all of his disguises, he simply did not fit into any life she might imagine for him. But she did not ask him any questions. 

Instead, she simply lay back near the foot of the bed, slowly shifting her last scrap of clothing down over her hips.

The places where she was still soft delighted him. He had brooded over the muscular swell of her calves, momentarily glimpsed as she crossed a river. Closed his eyes against the power implied by the way she swung a glowing shard of energy into a foe. But even the converse was arousing. Her thighs were round and delicate, and when she relaxed her hips, he could see a scrap of pink between them. 

Evelyn bent her arms behind her head, watching him. It was ridiculous, the thought that he would simply come and lie down on top of her. Make the kind of polite and simpering love to her that the fools who panted after her would have offered. She could hardly believe  _ that _ of him. 

Her expression was carefully bland as he stalked across the room to her, even though he could see her chest vibrating with anticipation. If they were to have this out, there was no way to make it pretty. His story had never been a love story. At best it was a cautionary tale, at worst a tragedy. 

Solas snatched one ankle and used it to drag her towards him until her knees were on the edge of the mattress. Then he used the leverage to flip her over. She dug her elbows into the bed for support, but had scarcely managed to find a position she was able to hold until he was on her. 

He thrust his face between those satin-skinned thighs, hooked her ankles over his shoulders. She was so wet her whole cunt was smeared with it before he even got his lips on her, and he cursed himself for feeling gratified by that. She was in this room, naked, baring her most intimate spaces to him--he had to know already that she wanted him. He did not need to consider why. 

So he emptied his mind and dragged his tongue across her from her cleft to her ass, and dug his fingers into her thighs when she squirmed and squeaked at the sensation. He used to be good at this, he thought. It was hard to remember why, or what exactly he had done. It had been a very long time ago; none of his lovers had cared to waste their endless lives fighting a doomed rebellion, and he had not lowered himself to win new allies by taking them to bed. What did that leave, then? His enemies, he supposed, as he swirled his tongue around her clit. None had taken as much from him as Evelyn. 

It had to be muscle memory. The way he was able to wring noises from her as he licked across her cunt. The way he knew when he should swirl his tongue gently across her bud, and when he should suck it. She was vocal and responsive, true, but her voice quickly devolved from anything that could be considered a directive. Instead, she simply thrust her hips back against his face, moaning slurred encouragements. Well. He was hardly one to criticize her manners. He could feel her thighs tremble. Muscles in her stomach jumped. Perhaps she was thinking of someone other than him. She could not see him, after all--her forehead was pressed against the mattress, she could not see anything--but why would she think of him, anyway?

He was just lips and tongue and teeth against her. 

He disregarded any sounds that could have been his name.

He pulled his mouth away only long enough to rub his thumbs across her, spreading her for one finger thrust inside. She was soft and wet, and his cock gave a wretched pulse as he thought about what it would feel like to fuck her. 

Like giving up his last claim to being a good man, he thought, deluding himself for another moment that he was not headed there imminently, as soon as her body finished clenching around his hand. She was the kind of woman who got quieter as she came, her spine arching and her hands clenching on the counterpane, but her breathing falling almost silent. 

Solas licked at her until she jerked her hips away from oversensitivity. He sat back on his heels then, catching his own breath and wiping his face against his shoulder. Her skin was flushed and red, and there was a pattern of fingerprints against her left calf where his hand had clenched on her. 

Evelyn crawled up the bed, only looking back when she got her knees curled underneath her. He considered the expression on her face. Satisfaction did not make it look any less dangerous. If anything, the heavy-lidded glance she shot him made a pulse of pure panic quiver in his stomach. 

He quashed it, following her onto the bed. She’d seen enough to know him as a man. It was short enough time until she would know him as the Dread Wolf. There was no reason not to discard the mask entirely. 

Something on his face made her hesitate: “Solas, are you alright? You-” He cut off her words  by sliding his hand to her throat. He could feel her pulse beat rapidly against his fingertips, and her breath swell against his palm. Her expression was concerned, but not frightened--her eyes still searched his drawn face. He rejected her care. He did not want her to love him when this was over, he did not even want her to  _ like _ him. If she planned to survive what was coming, only hate provided enough light and heat to keep a wounded soul alive. He knew that from experience. 

Evelyn’s face said that she was coming to some rapid conclusions about herself as he experimentally squeezed the sides of her neck. Her lips flexed, her pupils dilated. 

“Be quiet,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Do not ruin this.” Evelyn nodded as best she could, small white teeth scraping across her swollen lips. 

Solas put another hand between her shoulder blades, forcing her face into the pillows of the bed. Evelyn groped for support, grabbing onto the headboard. His body remembered this too, even if his mind found it hard to conjure any other woman he had ever touched. He remembered how to run his hands down her lower back to soothe her into softness. How to spread her thighs with his knee. How to brush the tip of his cock against her wet folds to make her cant her hips back against him. 

Solas imagined spirits capturing this moment in the Fade; the Dread Wolf, thrusting deep into the representative of human power, both of them gasping for the pleasure of it. What could possibly capture the emotion of the moment, though? Nothing that could be so easily categorized as desire or rage or even...

Her body was warm and yielding against and around him, the long line of her vulnerable to him. For all her shoulders and arms were corded with muscle, she looked exposed and breakable below him. Just a mortal. 

He snapped his hips so hard that his balls pressed against her. 

“Oh, Andraste!” she yelped, and Solas growled to hear her call out for her human deity. He hauled her back against his body, lifting her easily so that she straddled his lap and he balanced back on his heels. Her hair was in his face, and he pulled it to the side, exposing the back of her neck. He pulled her up and down on his cock to make her tits shake. 

The next time she cursed by a deity that was not him, he bit her, teeth digging into the muscle between her neck and shoulder. She cried out, and her cunt pulsed around him. He was losing track of anything but the exquisite slip of her body around his. Anything but the space where he was inside her, dragging his cock through the only piece of the world that felt real to him. 

Their bodies were slippery with sweat where they touched: the valley between her breasts where his arm supported her, the curve of her neck where he licked the small wound he had made, the cleft of her thighs where his other hand now pressed. He wanted to feel her come around his cock. He ordered her to do it.

“I will, I will, Solas, it’s so good, it’s so--” she babbled as his fingers stroked the place where their bodies were joined. He could not believe he was here. He should never have done this. He never wanted to go. He wanted this every day. The exquisite clench of her cunt around him. The ragged sound of her breathing. 

What kind of fool was he? What kind of monster? The kind that drove his cock deep into his enemy, a woman who might have loved him if he’d ever let her, and came in shuddering waves, the muscles of his stomach tensing against her lower back. Her body was shaking, shivering--no, perhaps that was him. His head felt blurred and fuzzy, the nerves in his back and arms tingling and uncertain. He was still inside of her, her body tight and hot around his softening cock. He could hear his heart beat in his ears. 

Evelyn was the one who moved away first, the one who disentangled their forms, sliding forward and flicking sweaty hair away from her face and neck. She rolled off the bed, heedlessly graceful in her nudity. She walked to a side table where she had a ewer of water. He watched her pour and drink from an earthen mug, the muscles of her throat moving as she swallowed. He still knelt on the bed, muscles locked to keep himself upright. 

Evelyn refilled the cup and crossed back to the bed, sitting on the edge without touching him. She offered him the drink. He eyed it warily, the small kindness setting him back in the way that her cunt against his face had not. He felt drunk as he reached for it, but it wasn’t the wine, now a distant memory. He was intoxicated by the ready intimacy she offered him. By the softness of the expression on her face as she regarded his naked form. By the line of her arm, extending the cup to him. 

He closed his mouth over the spot she had drunk from. His hand was shaking wildly, and he spilled some water over his lips and down his chin. Evelyn took the cup away from him when he had managed a few swallows and placed it on the nightstand. Then she put a palm on his chest, directly over his heart, and pushed him back until he lay against the pillows. 

Something rattled in his chest. He felt wounded, torn. The noise he made startled him, but not her. If he did not know that they were alone, he would have thought the sob came from some other throat. 

Evelyn broadly telegraphed her motions as she moved closer and curled up next to him. She approached him like a feral animal she sought to capture. She wrapped an arm around the dip in his waist, pressing her chest to his back. He could feel her heart beating rapidly against him. He made that animal noise of hurt again. His nose was running. 

“This happens,” she said roughly, her arms gathering him tighter against her. “It’s okay. This happens.” 

His mind spun wildly. What was  _ this _ ? The sex? His tears and shudders? The collapse of his barriers against anyone who might care for him? The fall of the Veil? His betrayals? They all happened. They all  _ would _ happen. 

He felt the magic in her Mark flicker in her palm, but she did not loosen her grip on him. It must hurt her. He should take it and go. 

His heart was a banked coal in his chest. He would let it burn just a little while longer. 

**Author's Note:**

> I can't turn off what turns me on.
> 
> Kinkshame me on Twitter @YTCShepard, Tumblr @ YoursTrulyCommanderShepard, or Discord @ Shepard#9690
> 
> Also, ask me about contributing to Dragon Age Kinktober!


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